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Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law

 

Dr Catherine Seville (1963-2016), a Reader in the Faculty of Law, has died suddenly at home. We are shocked by Catherine's death and the loss this brings to CIPIL and the Law Faculty. She will be greatly missed at the University of Cambridge.

Information about funeral arrangements will be distributed as it becomes available.

Dr Catherine Seville is Reader in Law, and currently Vice-Principal and Director of Studies in Law at Newnham. With a first degree in music and then a Cambridge degree in English, when she turned to law a special interest in copyright seemed natural. Her first book, Literary copyright reform in early Victorian England, was published in the Cambridge Studies in English Legal History series. Her next book, The Internationalisation of Copyright Law: Books, Buccaneers and the Black Flag in the Nineteenth Century was published in the Cambridge Studies in Intellectual Property Rights Series (2006). It was awarded the Yorke Prize. Her article ‘Peter Pan’s rights: “to die will be an awfully big adventure”’ won the Seaton Award 2004, given by the Copyright Society of the USA. She continues to enjoy inter-disciplinary work: such as ‘Edward Bulwer Lytton dreams of copyright: “It might make me a rich man.”’, in Francis O’Gorman (ed.), Victorian Literature and Finance (Oxford University Press, 2007). Her chapter on copyright is in the latest published volume of the Cambridge History of the Book in Britain (Volume 6, 1830-1914). A chapter in the final volume (Volume 7, the twentieth century and beyond) is forthcoming. 'Novelists, literary property, and copyright', a chapter in the Oxford History of the Novel in English, Volume 4 1880-1940 appeared in early 2011. History remains a preoccupation. A chapter on Millar v. Taylor for Hart’s Landmark Cases in Property Law is in press. A chapter on British Colonial and Imperial Copyright for Edward Elgar’s Copyright History Research Handbook is in production. See also an article for WIPO 5th Anniversary Journal, The principles of international intellectual property protection: from Paris to Marrakesh (2013) 5 WIPOJ 94-103.

American copyright history is a particular interest.  See, for example,  'Authors as Copyright Campaigners: Mark Twain's Legacy' (2008) 55 Journal of the Copyright Society of the USA 283-359.  Provoked by the Google Library controversy, it considers the role and influence of authors and authors' organisations in copyright reform.  A further article, '19th-century Anglo-US copyright relations: the language of piracy versus the moral high ground', was published in Lionel Bently, Jennifer Davis, Jane C. Ginsburg (eds.) Copyright and piracy: an interdisciplinary critique (Cambridge University Press, 2010).

Dr Seville’s research interests also include intellectual property law in the European Union. Her book EU Intellectual Property Law and Policy was published by Edward Elgar in early 2009. A second edition is planned. An article, 'Developments (and Non-Developments) in the Harmonisation of EU Intellectual Property Law' appeared in the Cambridge Yearbook of European Law 11 (2008-9) 87-121. More contemporary issues were discussed in ‘Rhetoric and reality: the impact of constitutional and fundamental rights on intellectual property law, as revealed in the world of P2P’, in Ansgar Ohly and Justine Pila (eds.), The Europeanization of Intellectual Property Law: Towards a Legal Methodology? (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013). A chapter on EU IP for OUP’s Oxford Handbook of EU Law is in press. An article on the space needed for parody within copyright law following the CJEU’s judgment in Deckmyn is also in press. Dr Seville is the regular contributor for European Community Intellectual Property matters to the International and Comparative Law Quarterly, and for UK copyright matters to the Revue Internationale du Droit D'auteur.

Recent conference papers include, 'The Statute of Anne: rhetoric and reception in the nineteenth century' given at The ©©© Conference: Celebrating Copyright's tri-Centennial (Symposium by the University of Houston Law Center’s Institute for Intellectual Property & Information Law, June 2010), published in (2010) 47(4)  Houston Law Review 819-875.  A paper, 'The Statute of Anne: its legal legacy', was given at the Stationers' Company Event, Copyright in the Digital Age: Industry issues and impacts (Stationers Hall, London, November 2010).‘Controlling the production of literary works: hard then, impossible now?’ was presented at the interdisciplinary IP and Production Workshop (Cambridge, January 2015).